Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Mrs. Fixit

I like to fix things, and mostly I like to solder. Unfortunately, replacing an iPod battery requires no soldering, but was still stimulating.

Lately I noticed my 5 year old iPod's battery life was approximately 30 minutes, about the time it takes to go cross town on the bus. But, alas, no battery left for the return trip. I had heard about how expensive it was to replace the battery with Apple, but after a little googling around I found this place that sells batteries, and pretty cheap too with a lifetime warranty.

The hardest part about this job was prying off the cover. They supply 2 green prying tools, and also a pointy tool that had no use, but I have no patience for such work, and set the husband to the task. This is truly the kind of thing he excels at - it takes a bit of precision, some elbow grease, and patience -- took him about 15 minutes. I gave up after about 3.

At one point I thought I had ruined the whole thing when a red wire broke. Luckily, that wire is replaced with the new battery. Disaster averted.

And the best part? They sent a piece of CHOCOLATE with the battery and tools. Now, presumably, I will now have 74% more nonstop music.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this link. My old 30G iPod video battery is showing similar signs of running down too.

Jill said...

Follow up note. During the part of the repair when I broke the wire, I sent an email to the battery company asking what to do. A few minutes later when I realized that it was not a disaster, I emailed them again to tell them to ignore my momentary panic.

Today, I got a lovely PERSONAL email from them asking if all went well after all.

WTF! I haven't had such nice customer service in ages... maybe eons.